Analyst work is not sequential, and moves back and forth, from one stage to another, across multiple tasks at a moment's notice. There is a need for an integrated approach for supporting analysts [Wright, Kapler, 2004]. An integrated work environment should provide a common visual vocabulary for analytic work, creating a mixed-initiative environment for the whole analysis workflow and a workspace ready for collaboration. It also needs to be a test bench into which new technologies can be integrated. Primarily, it is the cognitive space where the analyst will see, and interact with, more information, more quickly, with more comprehension.
The large number of potential context switches between tools/mediums constitutes another kind of friction or overhead observed. Based on the observed process of building large “shoeboxes” in Word, (i.e. pasting sequentially usually in a single Word document all bits that appear relevant to the whole task), one could infer that evidence marshalling is particularly difficult. It must be hard to get the big picture by looking at pages and pages of text. The analyst probably relies heavily on memory to connect the dots. Related to this is the lack of observable use of various analytical methods (e.g. inference networks, ACH, models, etc.). Considering the relative short-term tasks and the difficulty of building say inference networks or any kind of analytical charts in Word, it is not particularly surprising. In the end, this seems to indicate that analysis content (hypothesizing, fleshing out hypotheses with evidence proving and refuting them, corroborating, evaluating the diagnosticity of the evidence, and assessing which hypotheses are most likely, etc.) is something that happens mostly in the analyst's head.
Many researchers have warned about the possible consequences of doing analysis primarily in one's head. The analyst is more prone to human cognitive biases and it may not be as easy to collaborate and to communicate about the analytical process and how the conclusions were reached than if analytical methods were used and so made the thinking explicit. The well-known analysis “bathtub” curve [Rose, 1996], showing that most of the analyst time is spent in information retrieval (IR) and report creation and almost relatively no time doing analysis, was replicated.
Therefore, a solution seeking to address one or more of these shortcomings is desired.